


Blessed

by ilgaksu



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Backstory, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 11:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7221346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm an atheist," Erik says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessed

Nicky Hemmick moves to Den Haag in 2007, after Erik accepts a year's contract working on their skyline. It's for the Ministry of Justice, or Eurojust, or someone - Erik has told him but when Nicky says he hangs on Erik's every word what he means is he hangs on Erik's mouth, the bow of his lip a hook, a lure, a fragment of a song Nicky heard in a club by accident once and never forgot. Anyway, it's someone to do with justice, a high and mighty concept for better people than Nicky. Nicky, in the habit of a lifetime, has lost faith with it.

But they want a crisp new building for a crisp new decade, and Erik's company wins the contract. Nicky walks along the clean street in the clean city, with the polka dot patterns winking faintly in the sunlight on the pavement.

“Hydrophobic stone,” Erik says. “The dots show up when it rains.” His hand is warm against Nicky’s and nobody says a word, and with their silence each breath gets easier. Although Nicky doesn’t stop watching his back and may never, Erik’s hand is warm and the rain shines up the patterns on the pavements. Nicky is struck dumb by the supermarkets and Erik laughs as he piles their basket with fruit and cheese.

Sometimes, when Erik is working late again, Nicky stands in brightly-lit grocery lines of that glistening fruit, the colours soft and hyper-real all at once. He tells himself he does not miss late-night microwave mac and cheese with Matt, both of them too exhausted after a match to speak. Just the warm backlight of the machine, whirring, and silence.

He hadn't expected to miss America. America he shed like a second skin, one day back in Germany, in the shower with Erik; Erik put his mouth to Nicky's mouth and Nicky nearly stopped breathing with the need of it. And America just fell off him, all the accumulated weight and hurt, and slipped away like so much grime.

No, that's wrong. He hadn't expected to miss the country that birthed him and made something in him sicken still at the sight of church - wary and suspicious, a sinner struck down by God and they say lightning doesn't strike twice but they say a lot of dumb shit, Nicky knows. He knows the Bible backwards and he knows better. But he had expected to miss Palmetto. After all, _family is all we have_ , his father used to say, his eyes closed in prayer at table, _Nicky, Nicholas, my beloved son. Family is all we have._

They give Erik a black Government car and Nicky laughs at him for being a sellout even as he remembers the sleek muscle of a blood money Maserati. Nicky is very good at making laughter into a comfort blanket of white noise.

“Hey,” Erik says to him, “You're doing that thing again.”

He means _come back to me_ and Nicky, who would eat out of Erik's hands if it made him happy, does. He slots his body against Erik's, fucks him in the backseat of his fancy car, and laughs into the night until all the white noise is gone.

*

 _Blessed be the meek._ Nicky is quiet for a whole day after meeting Erik for the first time. All the love stories say that want makes you run your fucking mouth off; _To His Coy Mistress, Sonnets of Dark Love_ , _I want to fuck you like an animal, cut him into little pieces for he will make the face of heaven so fine -_

(Leviticus, abomination, _God gives us each our own cross to bear, Nicholas_. And when Nicky said _Amen, Father_ , he was never quite clear who he was addressing.)

For Nicky, struck dumb at seventeen by Erik's cornflower eyes, love turns his tongue to glue.

 _Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth._ Matthew 5:5. His father, his pastor, the Dormitory Monitor at Safe Haven; he hears them all at once, a trinity of overlapping memory.

“I’m an atheist,” Erik says. He says it cautiously, almost apologetically, seeing the Bible fall out of Nicky’s suitcase. Nicky smiles.

It takes another four hours for him, in halting German, to ask Erik to pass the salt at dinner, but when Erik does their fingers brush. Nicky’s heart jolts. Nicky hates himself. Erik, in the haloed light of the overhead lamp, is everything Nicky has ever wanted, is everything Nicky has ever wanted to take, is everything Nicky has ever beaten himself with and called it penance.

“I can show you the city tomorrow, if you like,” Erik says in English. He hovers in the doorway of the guest room, now Nicky’s, holding some clean towels.

“Sure,” Nicky says in German, something faint in his chest. There is no one here who knows him. _There is no one here who knows him._ There is no one to ask after his girlfriend, no one to awkwardly refer to the year he took to be saved. Erik is still holding the towels. There is no one here who knows him at all. He crosses the room to meet Erik halfway.

*

They fought over the twins once.

"There are quicker ways to kill yourself," Erik says. "You were half dead that first day, when I saw you there in the airport. I saw you, in your jacket with your shoulders, but I said to myself: that is a boy hanging on by his fingernails."

  
Erik has naturally always been his most eloquent in German. When Nicky replies, he barely realises he's reverted to English.

"Family is all we have," he says, over and over, "Family is all we have," and Erik looks horrified, crushes Nicky to his chest and kisses his hairline and says, "Shhh, darling, I've got you."

Nicky doesn't notice he's crying for a very long time.

*

This is how they happened: Nicky is newly eighteen and so is Erik and they are cycling together through the countryside on a visit to Erik's aunt in Bavaria. The sun is hot on the back of Nicky's neck: his skin and thighs ache with sunburn and exercise. Ahead of him, Erik is golden in the noon heat and Nicky watches him, feeling sweat slick down his spine in a way that is both intimate and inevitable, and crashes his bike on the next turn.

He feels the searing of a new graze. The sky tilts. He hears the screech of Erik slamming on his brakes, the clatter of him dropping his own bike dead in the road.

"Oh my God, Nicky," he says, and Nicky curls instinctively around the fresh cut on his knee and says "It's okay."

"No, it's not," Erik says, "Let me see," and suddenly they're not talking about Nicky's clumsiness anymore.

Silently, Nicky uncurls himself. Erik cups the back of his knee. Nicky gasps a little. Erik rubs his thumb back and forth soothingly and accidentally drags it through a smear of Nicky's blood. They both stare, transfixed, at Erik's hand on Nicky's skin. The sun beats down.

  
"Nicky," Erik says in English. He sounds stricken, clumsy with need. "Nicky. I can't unless you ask me. You have to -"

"Please," Nicky says, and Erik kisses him. Later, they push their bikes to a clearing hidden off the road. Later, Nicky finds a swipe of his own blood on his face from Erik's fingers; later, he kisses Erik's knuckles and calls it sacrament.

They are eighteen, they have all the time in the world; they are eighteen, there is never enough time, and they are always so hungry.

*

“Hey, baby,” Nicky sing-songs down the phone, and feels Erik’s answering laughter light up his bones. He cradles the phone against the side of his face and curls onto his side in the empty lounge. From inside his room, he can hear an ominous level of silence, but ignores it in favour of hearing Erik’s voice. He ignores a lot in favour of Eric’s voice, up to and including Aaron making retching noises every time he hears Nicky say _baby_ in  _th_ _at fucking voice_.  “How’s the contract going?”

“Don’t even fucking ask,” Erik growls, and Nicky laughs again, feeling buoyed and dizzy and dumb with it. “How’s your murder sport?”

“Nobody’s actually ever died from Exy,” Nicky tells him. “I don't think. Although I feel like Kevin is hoping to get elected to be the first patron saint.”

“Doesn’t he have to be martyred for that?” Erik asks him. Nicky isn’t Catholic, but Erik seems to defer to him on every Christianity-related motif, something Nicky finds endearing and would probably send his parents to an early grave. Nicky frowns a little at the thought.

“Exactly. Andrew would do it for free.”

“Hasn’t he filled up his death-threat quota for this month? This year? This lifetime?” In the background, Nicky hears the clatter of Erik fixing himself something to eat. There’s the faint hiss of the gas stove.

“Oh, he’s only getting started,” Nicky replies, half an eye on the door. “It’s only been a fortnight and he’s slammed at least two people against a wall, and with Kevin it was twice. Do I count it again if it was twice?”

“You count it again if it was twice.” There’s a crash. “Ah, fuck.”

“You dropped the pan again, didn’t you? Are you making instant noodles again? Those aren’t good for you, babe.”

“I’m definitely not making instant noodles again,” Erik says, blatantly lying and opening a new packet of instant noodles.

“I can hear you, Erik. Don’t make me come over there.”

“That a threat?” Erik says, and he’s laughing but the longing underneath takes Nicky under like a well-placed hit on the court. He feels his legs buckle just the same. He feels the ache of the forming bruise.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Erik says quickly. “You still there?”

Nicky takes one breath, then another.

“Yeah,” Nicky says, “Always, you know that. Are you still getting blocked by the other company then?”

In all honesty, Nicky doesn’t give a shit about the other company, and they both know that, but he’s trying. They’re both trying. What Nicky wants is to sleep, and by the time he wakes up for Erik to be here, in the empty lounge. He wants to fuck Erik, properly, his hands on Erik’s hips instead of holding onto fragments of gasps on a long-distance phone call whenever Nicky can get his room to himself. He wants shared air, shared space, something less liminal.

We don’t always get what we want. Erik tells him about the other company. Nicky listens to Erik’s voice instead of what Erik says. Erik finishes making the instant noodles.  

Erik falls asleep still on the line, and Nicky makes another cup of coffee and listens to Erik breathe.

*

It’s 2007 and Nicky still obsessively curates his own sins years down the line. He fixates: on that one time three months ago he snapped at Erik over breakfast, that time he accidentally swore in Centrum in front of some children, that time he tried to jolt a laugh out of Aaron. A thousand tiny lapses, a thousand tiny failures, a thousand tiny reasons in Nicky's internal self-trial. _Your Honour, we find the defendant guilty of being unloveable._ A psychiatrist he met once in a bar in Nuremberg told him he was exhibiting all the symptoms of an anxiety disorder. Nicky isn't sure. He’s not a shy person, he's just too much.

He is only sure of this: that some nights, he barrels into Erik as he walks through the door of their beautiful flat in a beautiful city. Outside, the flowers hang heavy and Nicky says, "I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry," into Erik's work shirt. A bartender he met once in a straight bar in Munich once told him _nobody likes clingy twinks_ , and Nicky had laughed along. Erik kisses the top of his head each time, and Nicky thinks he'd like to go back now: to that straight bar in Munich, to his high school graduation, to the Safe Haven out of state Nicky still has nightmares about waking up in all over again.

Nicky would like to go back, gasoline slicking his wrists; go back and strike a match off his teeth, his very bones, and burn them all to the ground.

*

A quick anecdote:

Nicky learnt lighter tricks during his time working at Eden. He remembers how Andrew never watched the blur of sleight of hand; he always locked onto the flame, he always knew exactly where it was and how close, and Nicky is twenty five years old in Europe when he finally understands.

*

Here's something else you should know: Nicky thought he was going to die that night in Columbia until Andrew stepped in. And Nicky knows his Bible backwards, how to repay that kind of debt. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A life for a life.

Nicky thinks Andrew might appreciate the Old Testament.

* 

Nicky is eighteen in Berlin, and the boy dancing on the platform with him hooks his fingers into the waistband of Nicky's jeans to tug him closer.

  
"Nice eyeliner," the boy says, and smiles slow and sticky, like sinking your teeth into cake.

"Nice ass," Nicky replies, and the boy laughs. The sweat slicks down the bare skin of his chest in a sudden jerk at the movement. Nicky's eyes track it. He breathes in around a sudden catch of arousal in his gut.

"You sure you can tell? It's dark in here," the boy says, and Nicky's about to reply when he sees Erik appear at the edge of the heaving dance floor.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says, “I can’t tonight,” and jumps from the platform, and runs to Erik, crashing bodily into him by the bar. Erik’s arms come around him on automatic.

“Hey!” Nicky says, a little too loud in Erik’s ear. He’s a little drunk. Only a little.

“That boy was cute,” Erik says. He doesn’t sound jealous, merely like he’s trying not to laugh. “And very into you.” He tucks a piece of hair behind Nicky’s ear and Nicky nuzzles his hand.  

“Don’t worry,” Nicky says, “You’re cuter,” and Erik stops trying not to laugh and just gives into it, and Nicky loves it when Erik laughs.

“You do know you said that out loud, right?” Erik says. He sounds fond. Nicky sneaks the shots out of Erik’s hands and downs them both.

“Did I?” Nicky says, and shrugs. “Oh, well. Just don’t tell my boyfriend.”

*

The first time he sees Andrew again, after the courts and the drugs, Andrew takes one look at Nicky's expression and laughs. He laughs all the way to the car and all the way onto the Interstate and Nicky knows from the movies you're supposed to slap people out of this sort of thing but -

He meets Aaron's eyes in the rearview.

"Just turn the fucking radio on," Aaron snarls, and they listen to Marc Bolan, traffic reports, an advertising segment. Nicky keeps his eyes on the road and away from Andrew, and the bag of fresh pills swings from the hook of Andrew's hand, between them like thirty pieces of silver.

*

After Bavaria, they fuck their way through at least three of Erik’s pretentious indie albums, and Nicky complains about every single one just to get Erik to shut him up. It works every time. Erik is predictable, but then so is he: they are young and enthusiastic and starving, and so Nicky learns every last place to sink his teeth in. He makes Erik say his name, over and over, like Erik could forget who’s there with him, because Nicky has been an only child for so long, Nicky is not inclined to sharing. Erik’s older sister sees a mark on Erik’s throat one day when she visits from her work in England, and she laughs and laughs and later she takes Nicky aside and says _thank you._  

“What for?” Nicky says.

“Giving me ammunition,” she says. “Erik has always been a little too serious for his own good.” She looks behind her, to where Erik is watching them anxiously, as though to try and overhear in the crowded pub, and looks at Nicky like she wants to say something more.

“I like him a little serious,” Nicky offers, and her eyes warm. She kisses Nicky’s cheek and they head back to the table without another word.

*

Nicky is halfway through booking his flight back to America at the end of the exchange. He is nearly nineteen years old, and for all the time people have always told him he was a bleeding heart, he swears he can feel it for sure this time.

“Nicky,” Erik says, hovering in the doorway, “Can we talk about - about America?”

His English is flawless. His vowels shake. Nicky shuts his laptop.

“Yeah,” he says.  

He never completes the application. He gets an email reminder suggesting there’s still time before the form expires. But he deletes the email, and leaves an answerphone message on his parents’ machine, and then picks up the phone when they ring back, and Erik sits right there in the room, and Erik holds his hand, and Nicky breathes, just breathes, just fucking breathes. 

He books the flight with another airline. It's a return ticket. 

*

Nicky doesn’t talk about Safe Haven. It was a place out of state. His parents sent him there for a year. He was sixteen. He left when he was seventeen. These are all facts and facts are not the same as memories. One day, he tells Erik about it, haltingly, sat watching the sun dip lower and lower in the sky until there was nothing left to see. He talks about the Dormitory Monitor and prayer assignments and how the front gate looked. He doesn’t look at Erik’s face.

“You are extraordinary,” Erik says afterwards, quietly. “You are one of the bravest men I have ever met.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Nicky replies.

“Yes, you did,” Erik replies. “You lived.”

He goes to get Nicky a blanket. It’s gotten cold without the sun. He puts it around both their shoulders and holds Nicky for a long time.  

Nicky doesn’t talk about Safe Haven. It’s not a nice story.

*

"I'm sorry," Nicky says one night, Andrew gritting his teeth against the comedown in a moment of clarity. 

For a moment, Andrew just stares at him, unsmiling, a bead of sweat sliding down to his collar.

"Make it worth it," Andrew says, puts a new pill in his mouth and swallows it dry.

*

“Do you always do this?” Erik asks one day, when they’re eighteen, passing a beer bottle back and forth whilst staring at the city go by. Nicky puts his mouth exactly over the spot Erik’s had been. It is weeks before Bavaria, and so he figures it’s the closest he can get.

“Do what?” Nicky asks. When he passes the bottle to Erik, their fingers brush and Nicky feels it in his spine.

“Apologise,” Erik says.

“I guess,” Nicky says. “Sorry.”

“That’s not why I asked,” Erik replies, and hands him back the bottle. Nicky steals another indirect kiss and changes the subject.

*

Nicky is smoking out the back door of Eden, sat on the steps. He’s wearing black skinny jeans with the knees ripped out, doesn’t think about the dirt on the stone he’s sat on, is inspecting a bruise across one kneecap from a bout. The taste of dust in the back of his mouth; he doesn’t use when he’s working, but it’s technically after his shift and no one here gives a fuck what he does off the clock. He wants to dance. When he looks up, there’s a couple of strangers at the mouth of the alleyway.

“The entrance is round the front and to the left,” Nicky says on automatic, and finishes his cigarette off. When he looks up from stubbing the butt of it out against the steps, they’re still there though, silent as though smelling for blood in the water. The adrenaline hits him like a drench from a bucket. His knee aches when he stands. He reaches out for the door handle back into the club without looking away from them. Don’t turn your back on bad men and all that.

Nicky knows, quietly and with growing terror, what this is. This is what happens to men like him. A bartender in a straight bar in Munich once told him _nobody likes clingy twinks_ , and Nicky had laughed along. The door, when he yanks at it, sticks. It does that sometimes. He goes to tug on it, put his whole body weight behind this last exit strategy, and that’s his first mistake.

Don’t turn your back on bad men.

Several minutes later, he hears the door open and looks wildly to the side. Andrew is framed in the doorway, looking for all the world like the icon of a young saint. The club music ripples out, a little louder. Nicky spits up some blood. His chest twinges. The world is quiet and the world is loud and the world does not make sense.

“You’re late,” he says, and looks at the men surrounding Nicky blankly. “Aaron’s waiting for us.”

“Sorry,” Nicky says, and he sees something in Andrew’s eyes shift, and later, he tries not to think a lot about what happened after that.

He remembers Andrew saying: don’t look. He remembers turning his head towards the sound of Andrew’s voice.

*

Nicky Hemmick moves to Den Haag in 2007, and he lives in a beautiful apartment in a beautiful city with his beautiful boyfriend. His cousins don’t reply to his texts often, but his cousin’s boyfriend does sometimes and that’s good enough for Nicky. He knows his cousins have never been good with words, not like they think they are. Words are too raw for them. Nicky understands. Nicky watches Erik, half-asleep, eyes half-lidded, in the faint light of the bedside lamp, the line of his throat and chest and the shadows on the underside of his jaw, and feels the old family trait of struggling to say the right words balloon up in his chest. He doesn’t fight it, though.

After all, family is all we have. Erik watches him, struggling to keep his eyes open, and Nicky loves and loves and loves, past the constraints two languages will allow him.

“Marry me,” Nicky says. And Erik smiles.

*

Nicky is eighteen, and is putting on eyeliner to wear outside the confines of his bedroom, is putting on eyeliner to wear outside to a gay club, and he has never been more scared in his life. His hand shivers but he grips the brush of the eyeliner tighter and tighter, white-knuckled like he goes into games.

Finally, he is done, and he leans back. He catches Erik’s eyes in the mirror. There is no one here who knows him.

“How do I look, baby?” he says. The endearment sits on his tongue. He isn’t used to calling Erik that outside of sex yet, where he’s gone from being silent to never shutting up. It makes him nervous. Erik seems to like it. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to this. Erik comes up behind him in the mirror reflection and wraps his arms around Nicky; Nicky leans his head back and feels Erik press his face into the join of neck and shoulder.

“Like always,” Erik says, and Nicky, disappointed, opens his mouth to say so when Erik continues, lips moving against Nicky’s skin. “Like if someone had taken every stupid dream I had when I was fifteen and made him real.”

“I’m real,” Nicky says, in lieu of anything else, the lump in his throat sudden and stark. Erik looks up and their eyes meet, caught in the mirror, and Erik’s eyes are very blue.

“I know,” Erik says, and takes his hand. “That’s the best part. You ready to go?”

 _I’d go anywhere with you,_ Nicky realises abruptly. The awareness of it ricochets through him and weakens his knees. The guilt, the shame, it is old now after a few months in Berlin. It is familiar after a childhood like his. It’s an old family heirloom Nicky did not choose to inherit, but he can leave it in the attic most days. There is no one here who knows him; but there was no one in America either, was there?  

“Let’s do this,” Nicky says, and is first out the door.  

 


End file.
